


The Adventure of the Locked Door

by Hufflepuff_Donkey



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27796141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hufflepuff_Donkey/pseuds/Hufflepuff_Donkey
Summary: A man, murdered. A room locked from the inside. No murder weapon. And yet, someone must have done it.Once again, Sherlock Holmes is presented with a formidable riddle which he must solve quickly, for lives might at stake. Along with his friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, Holmes embarks on a dangerous journey to shed light on the truth - a journey he might not come back from.In the same spirit as "Octoquantum", my latest finished work, I'm writing this early in the morning when I am still sleep-drunk and unable to form a coherent thought, let alone type up stories.
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter One

I will preface this sory by sayingthat my dear frien SHerlock Homes repeatedly told me that I should never use this case as source material for my writing. He was very adamant that I never present this case to the public, and that is way, until now, I have not done so. You might ask why I respected his strange and peculiar wishies when it comes to my own writing activity, which is mine and only mine; my answer is this - Sherlock Holmes was my friend, and his wishies were, and still are, important to me.

In this particular case, however, I have decided to act against my freidns’ directions. That is why you, dear reader, are now able to rea dthese carefully written lines. The world nowadays is filled with events that even our dear Sherlock Holmes could not have foreseen. All the actors in the dreadful case I shall relate now have since died, or otherwise disappeared in a way that allows me to tell this story without fear of detrsoying someone’s reputation. Names have been changed where I saw it fit; everythign else is the truth, and only that.

My friedn Hlmes, too, has died since this cas e played out its dreadful strings. May this be a way to remebrer him.

*******

It was in the late 1900’s that, during a period of particularly haeavu activity at my practice, I received the visit of a paitnet I had never traated before. He recommended himself of a certain Dr. Baker, whomst I did not know but whomst was, according to this patient, very renownd in other parts of the ocuntry, and even on te continent. I was curious rather than impressed, and asked that patient - a certain Mr. Robert Bobert Tobertson, from Norwegia - all kinds of questions about that very good doctor Baker, all of which the patient answered with undeniable enthusiasm. It was a rather funny experience, really.

By the end of the consultation, I did not prescribe anything besides fresh air, from the seaside if at all possible, and a lot of water. The patient did not seem at all satisfied with that.

“That is all?” Tobertson asked, almost angrily. “Dr. BAker would have prescribed something else.”

“Well”, I said, “as you can see I do not have the honour of being Dr. Baker, and as such, I will prescribe what I think is most fitting to your ailment.”

“I do not understand why he recommended you”, the Tobertson said, shaking his head. “What a waste of time.”

I held back a sigh. Mr. Tobertson was neither the first nor the last patient to complain today. Most patient complained because I would not prescribe antibiotics. My answer to that was always the same: antibiotics had not been invented yet, and thus no chemist would be able to fill that prescription.

“Mr. Tobertson”, I began, “I understand you are disappointed but-”

“A-ha!” the patient suddenly burst out, and to my horror he pulled his goatee off his face as if it was nothing. He did the same to his eyebrows and lower lip.

“holmes!” I exclaimed, almost losing my footing. “Holmes, what is the meaning of this?”

Holmes laughed and jumped off the patient’s seat.

“A case, my dear Watson, a case of utmost _bizarrerie_.”

I remembreed that Holmes had spent several previous weeks in a state of intense excitation, having been offered no mystery to solve and no case to invstigate ever since he’d returned to Lady Chapleton the pearls she had lost after her indiscretion with the Earl of Redruth. His pacing had unnerved even Mrs. Hudson, who did not usually have any troube with it. I myself had begun considering moving back to 221b Baker Street to offer medical supervision to my friend. Now I was cursing myself for underestimating him so severely, for it was clear that Holmes was in no state of fragitility whatsoever; rather, he had been waiting to pounce like a leopard observing its prey; the letter he held in his hand was the trophy he had brought back from the hunt.

“Here, Watson, listen to this”, he said, and began to read.

> Dear Mr. Holmes, dear Dr. Watson,
> 
> it is in a state of deepest despair that I write to you. I do not know what else to do, and it has been so long since I have known any form of happiness or even just safety. But I must write to you anonymously, for I fear the scandal that would stain my family if this whole thing were to become known. Please excuse me for this.
> 
> If it is at your convenience, allow me to visit you at your adress on the 20th o.t.m. to ask for your advice in a very delicate and dangerous matter. I would be most grateful.
> 
> With friendly greetings  
>  \---

“So”, he exclaimed, “what do you make of this?”

“Why don’t we do this at home, Holmes?” I asked. “Around breakfast?”

“Ah”, Holmes said. “I see you have not forgotten the joys of Mrs. Hudson’s cooking.”

“I couldn’t”, I replied, putting on my coat and gathering by bag and walking stick. “Oh, Holmes, if only you knew how grateful I am that you chose the day’s last appointment to sabotage me.”

“Sabotage?” Holmes asked. “A performance, rather. I’m happy to see that my acting is still what it used to be.”

I nodded in agreement and shooed him out of my practice. He hailed a cab and gave his address, and I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic of the time we lived together. The feeling stayed with me until we arrived in Baker Street and it got stronger still once we sat down at our breakfast table in the living room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes and Watson attempt to find out more about the anonymous new client - over breakfast.

IT w s only once Holmes was fed to his liking and back to his normel levels of tea in his blood that he brought up the letter again. He produced it frm his pocket in a gesture very specific of him, and I thought it was rather extraordianry that so few of our friends knew about his past as an actor when it was so obvious he had been in the theater industry busssines. He read the letter to me again and looked up, raising one eyebrow and smirking.

“So, Wtasn”, he said. “What can you say from this?”

“Hand me the letter”, I said. “Befre i examine the wording of it, I want to see what i can make from the he paper.”

Holmes made a noise that I interepreted as satisfaction. I loooked closely at the paper. It was heavier than the ucual letter paper but not by much; the ink was unremerkable. The only thing that struck me was that, on a closer look, the writing seemed to be slightly shaky, as if the person who had writing the lettter had a slight tremor of the hand.

“Obviously I cannot diagnose anything from a simple letter”, I said, concluding the examination of the object, “but it seems to me that this person is used to be slightly shakig and thus writes in such a fashion that a thicker paper is needed in order to avoid scratching holes into correspondance.”

Holmes made a noise that sounded terribly like an unsuccessfully held-in snort. I pretended not to notice and read that letter again.

“o.t.m. …” I mutttered to mysefl. “with friendly greetings…”

Holmes was silent, simply watching me as he would sometimes watch the animals he acquired for scientific study. Over the years I had grown to not feee uneasy about it anymore, but nonetheless it was a strange situation to fin donelself in.

“Holmes”, I finally exclaimed, “there are some peculiar expressions in this letter, indeed.”

“Which sentences have retained your attention?” Holmes asked, not like a teacher, but not unlike a teacher, either.

“The “friendly greetings”, in particular”, I said. “And the unfamiliar way of abbreviating “of this month”.”

Holmes nodded again.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Well, what do you make of all these hings you just told me?”

I suddenly found myself unable to form any conclusion whatsoever. All those strange things about the letter did indeed strike me as odd, but I could not see anything that would string them togetehr in such a way that I would be able to state anything about our anonymous correspondent.

“Enligten me, Holmes”, I said defeatedly. “I do not know what to make of them.”

Holmes smiled and motioned for me to give him the letter.

“See, Watson”, he began, “the letter arrived without any indication that it had been given to postage. This, of course, you had no way of knowing, and it is of little importance for us now - but the letter you saw is exactly what arrived here this morning.”

“The writing is going to be interesting later. First, I want to talk abou that wy the letter is written and show you how mmuch we can tell from this single letter alone. You will have noticed, of course, that the letter starts in a very traditional fasion - _Dear Mr. Holmes, dear Dr. Watson_ \- but! and tis is the interesting about it, the next sentence starts not with a majusculus, but with a minusclus. This, by itself, does not indicate anything specfic whatsoever; there a plenty of explanatins for this error, be it that the writer was tired and not very minutious, or that the letter was badly copied from a draft that was edited a lot. But listen to these sentences.”

Holmes cleared his throat and read:

“ _For I fear the scandal that would stain my family if this whole thing were to become known._ And this one: _Please excuse me for this._ Or: _If it is at your convenience._ And this last one, which you correctyl rearked upon: _With friendly greetings._ Listen to these sentences. What do they sound like?”

“The grammar is peculiar”, I said. “As if they had been written by someone who is not familiar with English.”

“You are correct once again, dear freind”, Holmes said. “this letter was written by a foreigner.”

He lit a cigarette, careful not to set fire to the letter.

“Now”, he continued, “it is one thing to know that our client is a foreigner. But it is not very hard to deduce where he comes from.”

“It isn’t?” I exclaimed, wondering how my friend could possibly know the exact country of origin of a man we only knew existed through one piece of correposande.

“My dear doctor”, Holmes smiled, “I am again and again baffled by your ability to doubt my abilities even though I have demonstrated countless times that even the seemingly impossiblest things can be deducted from the seemingly most insignificant clues.”

I had to concede, once again, that he was right.

“You remarked upon several oddities in the letter”, he began. “namely, the ending formula and the peculiar abbreviation which you correctly interpreted as meaning “of this month”. I will add one more element, which could be seen as a simple spelling mistake but in my opinion is more than that: our client spelled the word “address” with one “d” only.”

he showed me the letter again.

“To be frank, that had escaped me completely”, I confessed.

“Which I think is what would have happened to most people”, he said. “Your mind corrects that type of mistake easily. And, as an aside,”, his voice was barely more than a whisper, “you are called John, not Frank.”

“Oh”, I said, writing that down in my small notebook just in case. “Thanks.”

“No bother”, he said.

“So”, he continued, “we have the grammatical oddities, the minusuclus at the beginning of the latter, the ending formular, a peculiar obbreviation, and the word “address” spelled with one “d” only. What does that tell you, doctor?”

He looked at me expectantly. I thought about it for a few seconds, trying to make sense of this odd letter - and then it dawned on me.

“German!” I cried, “this man’s native tongue is German!”

Holmes laughed and clapped his hands together.

“Well done, Watson, well done! Yes, that is what I think. Our anonymous client will be visiting tomorrow and i hope you will be so kind as to -”

“You keep calling him _our_ client, Holmes, but I have my own medical practice, I have appointments.”

“I am sorry for assuming”, he said. “I will write to you after the man presents his case to me.”

“Please tell me then if he was indeed of German language”, I said.

“I shall”, Holmes said.

Mrs. Hudson entered to bring some more food, which I gratefully accepted and proceeded to eat up. Holmes said nothing, fully engulfed by the letter, forgetting even his cigarette which burned to ashes in his hands.

Eventually I said, “maybe I could drop by when the man visits?”

Holmes looked up from the letter, a strange sense of victory emanated from him.

“There is no telling when he’ll visit”, he said. “He announced no time, only a date.”

“That is a problem.”

“Not at all”, Holmes said quickly. “I could have your old room prepared for you. Thus you would be here if my client decides to be here in the early mornign hours.”

“But Holmes, but my practice. I cannot simply not show up.”

Holmes jumped over the sofa towards the fireplace and picked up a card lying on the mantelpiede.

“ _Dr. Algernon Turner, medical doctor and practitoner, seeks short employment in medical practice, write to, etc. etc._ ”

“Holmes! You already looked for a replacement! Were you so sure I would want to meet this anonymous client?”

“Well, yes.”

My amazement was trumped only by Mrs. Hudson, who entered again and said to me:

“Your room is ready, Doctor, and I am so excited to hear that you are considering moving back in with mr. Holmes.”

She left, and I turned back to Holmes.

“You are hopeless.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watson spends the night in his old room at 221b Baker Street.

With Mrs Hudson so happy to see me return to my old quarters and Holmes’ eerily perfect preparation of my replacement at my practice, I had no way to refuse staying for the night, and thus after breakfast I went upstairs to my old room to get changed for the night. I could not help but feel even more nostalgic when I settled in the comfortable bed for the night, remembering how Holmes and I had argued about whichich typed of bed would be best for my back until I reminded him that I was the medical professionall in the room. The memories of our first days together lulled me into a deep and refreshing sleep, better than any sleep I had gotten since I had moved out. I was woken up at seven o’clock though, by a sharp knock on my door.

“Watson!” a voice hissed from behind the door. “Watson, wake up!”

“NooOOooOOo” I groaned, turning away form the door.

“May I come in?” Holmes asked.

I moaned something that even I couldn’t definitively interpret as either a yes or a no. Holmes seemed much more sure about the fact that it was a yes; he gave the door one more little knock and walked into my room. I was facing away still, but the sudden burst of light was too much.

“Holmes!” I cried out, “close the door, it’s too bright!”

He did as he was told and did not seem to mind my foul mood. After all, we had lived together for a considerable amount of tieme in the past and he knew what to expect if he woke me up too early - or at all, actually. 

“Watson”, he whispered, “you must wake up.”

“But why?”

“Don’t you know what day we have?”

“Oh, the client, is he here already?” I started moving around, desperately trying to ge tup and get dressed. But Holmes motioned to stay calm.

“No, no, Watson, you are on time”, he said. “I received a telegram very late last night by means of which our client informed me that he will be here this evening at six c’cock.”

I let out a whimper of relief.

“But”, he continued, and I again feared the worst, “today is a very special day.”

I frowned, having not a clue of what he meant. Holmes saw my confusion and he had the knidness of not letting me simmer any longer.

“It’s your birthday, Watson!” Holmes exclaimed, producing a very small but neatly wrapped present from his pocket.

I had no idea that after all these years living apart, Holmes still remembered my birthday. We had celebrated it once or twice while we lived together but neither was it a regular occurence nor had he ever written me for my birthday after I moved out. I had thought he had forgotten the date and did not want me to think ill of him. I, of course, remembered his birthday, but because he seemed so forgetful about mine I had not written him for his birthdays either for I was afraid he would feel embarrassed about forgetting mine.

Today, though, he had remembered and even gotten me a present. I was overjoyed and jumped out of bed - only to realise I had undressed while asleep and was wearing only my moustache’s sleeping net. 

“Don’t worry, old friend”, Holmes said, “nothing I haven’t seen before.”

I was too embarrassed to say anything.

“I shall see you at the breakfast table”, Holmes said, leaving the room. “Dress if you like, but it’s not mandatory for the surprise I prepared.”

The door closed again, leaving me standing next to my bed, naked and cold, but happy that my old friend still was my old friend.


End file.
